Posts Tagged ‘Odijoo’

Odijoo’s Five Remedies for the Pain of eLearning

Friday, March 5th, 2010

While eLearning is often more effective, convenient and affordable for organizations than face to face training, it can also be a tremendous undertaking. To implement an eLearning solution in an organization, the following is required:

  • An authoring tool to create online courses from existing training material
  • Learning Management System (LMS) software to create a virtual Classroom out of the course material and manage/track student progress
  • Third party companies to install, customize, integrate and theme the often code-heavy LMS
  • A hosting company to host the LMS

The above reasons make implementing an eLearning solution not only a slow and complex process, but an expensive one, often costing tens of thousands of dollars. For Small to Medium sized businesses, with limited resources, this process and price tag is not feasible.

Odijoo is designed to simplify eLearning for SMBs, by bringing together an affordable and unique combination of Rapid and easy-to-use tools from a single platform. Organizations can sign up for Odijoo and for less than a few thousand dollars, can create courses, invite students and set up their own Online Training Centre, at their own Odijoo URL. Everything in Odijoo is hosted and managed for the user and all the tools required to get an organization’s courses online are built-in and accessible over the web. This simplified, all-in-one approach is the key behind Odijoo’s innovation.

Odijoo’s technical innovation lies in the following features:

Grad Cap

1. Odijoo Campuses – Allows organizations to have their own unique Odijoo URL, located at an Odijoo sub-domain of their choice (http://organizationname.odijoo.com). Known as an Odijoo Campus, this sub-domain can be used as a private Online Training Centre, to which employees can be invited, courses can be imported and employees can trained from. Odijoo Campuses can be customized to match an organization’s look and feel and are hosted, secure and affordable, costing between $700 and $5,000 total.

Pencils

2. Free Built in Course Authoring – Odijoo’s built in Course authoring tool allows members to create dynamic online training courses from scratch and then use them to teach within Odijoo. Courses are easy to create and can include formatted text, audio narration, videos, images, flash animations and more. Alternatively, instead of using the authoring tool, users can import PowerPoint slides into Odijoo and instantly convert them into Odijoo courses. It is 100% free to create and host courses in Odijoo, from both the authoring tool or from PowerPoint slides. Once a course is created, it can be taught to students from a member’s Odijoo Campus, or it can be shared or sold to other Odijoo users in the Marketplace.

HTTP

3. Free Course Publishing and Hosting – Once a course is created or imported into Odijoo, it can be turned into a classroom and administered to students for free. A classroom is a space which combines a course, with students, teachers and Learning Resources, such as discussion boards, quizzes and completion reports (student tracking and grading).

Shopping bag button

4. Marketplace – The Marketplace is where knowledge is shared, exchanged and monetized in Odijoo. Learners can access the Marketplace and:

  • Enroll in free courses that other users have put up.
  • Enroll in paid courses that cost money to enroll in. The enrollment fee is determined by that course’s creator.
  • Purchase syndicated course material from other members and teach it to their own students. This is called “Course Syndication” in Odijoo.

There is no charge to course creators for sharing free courses in the Marketplace. Odijoo only charges a fee to members who successfully sell or syndicate a course. For every successful purchase, Odijoo retains 10% of the purchase price (with a $5 minimum charge). There is no charge for trying to sell or syndicate a course, only for successfully selling or syndicating it. All payments in Odijoo are exchanged securely via a built-in PayPal system.

email icon

5. Social Learning – Odijoo is a Social Learning Platform, in that it combines eLearning with Social Networking, to create an Online Community of Knowledge. For example members can enroll in others’ courses and interact, through the Marketplace. They can also rate one another’s courses, add friends as contacts within Odijoo or send messages to other members, all from within Odijoo.

Odijoo Quiz, Completion Reports and Certification Screenshots

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

In our last blog entry, we showed you how to add quizzes and discussion boards to your Classroom, in order to assess your learners’ performance. Now, here ere are a few screenshots of Odijoo’s Quizzes, Completion Reports (Student grading and tracking) and Completion Certificates in action

Click images for full sized screenshots.

Screenshot 1:
Create a Classroom in Odijoo, import your courses and Learning Material, add quizzes, discussion boards and resources and invite your students to learn.

Screenshot 2:
Add a quiz to your classroom and as students complete it, give them a Passing  or Failing Grade, Feedback and choose whether you’d like to issue certification to students who pass

Screenshot 3:
View and track completion reports based on your quizzes and discussion boards in your Classroom to determine a final grade

Screenshot 4:
Determine the Look and feel of your Odijoo Certificates. Change the border colour, add a crest, choose what information to place on the certificate, add custom text and more

Screenshot 5:
Issue your certificate to those students who have passed your course!

Provide Certification for your Online Courses with Odijoo

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Odijoo’s new Certification feature allows you to create, customize and issue custom Completion Certificates to those students who have successfully passed your courses.

Simply create a course , grade your students and set up the look and feel of the certificate you’d like to issue. After you determine which students passed your course, one click of a button is all it takes to issue your certificate. Each certificate is automatically generated into a .PDF file and can be customized to include any or all of the following:

For example, you can:

  • Change the border colour
  • Add a Crest
  • Dynamically generate and place your Course, Instructor(s) and/or Student names on the certificate
  • Show credit hours and/or letter grade achieved
  • Add your own custom text to the certificate
  • And more…

Certificates are a great way to give your students something tangible upon completing your course and can help legitimize and finalize your training process.

To try it out for yourself, simply:

1. Create your course content and turn it into an Odijoo classroom

2. Get some students into your classroom. You can do this by either:

  • Inviting students into your classroom yourself
  • Putting your course up in the Odijoo Marketplace for any Odijoo user to join for free
  • Selling enrollment to your course in the Odijoo Marketplace

3. Add completion reports to your classroom give your students a final grade of “Pass” or “Fail”.

  • Set grading criteria, to determine what a student must do to pass the course and inform your students of it
  • Add elements such as quizzes and discussions to your classroom and grade your students based on these elements
  • Give you students a final grade of “Pass” or “Fail” based on their discussion participation and/or quiz scores

4. Add and issue an Odijoo Certificate.

  • Navigate to Classroom>Completion Reports and select “Manage Certificates” on the right.
  • Create and customize your certificate to include the information you require
  • When satisfied with your certificate, click “Issue Certificate” and the certification will automatically be given to all students that have passed the course, based on your Completion criteria.

For help with creating courses and classrooms in Odijoo, see our help documentation. For clarification on creating certificates with Odijoo, email support@odijoo.com.

How to Convert PowerPoints into Engaging Online Training Courses

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Odijoo’s Import PowerPoint feature is the fastest and easiest way to convert your existing organizational training material into dynamic and engaging online courses. Simply create your PowerPoint, or find an existing PowerPoint that you currently use for training and upload it as an Odijoo course.

Now add interactivity and students to your new PowerPoint-based course by importing it into an Odijoo Classroom and being able to add any or all of the following elements to it:

Add Discussions:
Engage your learners in the course material by adding discussion boards to your classroom. Discussions can be used for learners to ask questions or as open forums for learners to discuss course topics. You can choose whether you’d like discussions to be a graded or non-graded component of your classroom


check and cross icons

Create Quizzes:
Test your learners by adding dynamic and interactive quizzes to your classroom. Quizzes can be true/false, multiple choice or paragraph format and are added using a simple drag and drop mechanism. You can edit the number of attempts and grading criteria of each quiz and can determine whether you want each quiz to count for a learner’s final mark or not.

minimize and maximize icons

Upload Supplementary Material:
You can upload files to your classroom to provide learners with supplementary material. Uploaded files can be any format you wish, including HTML, PDF and Microsoft Office documents.

wax seal ribbon

Grade Learners and issue Certification:
Odijoo’s Completion Reports allow you to determine marking criteria and give learners a final grade and percentage.  You can also create a custom Certificate of completion, to certify learners who succesfully passed your course. Completion Certificates can include:

  • Change the border colour
  • Add a Crest
  • Dynamically generate and place your Course, Instructor(s) and/or Student names on the certificate
  • Show credit hours and/or letter grade achieved
  • Add your own custom text to the certificate
  • And more…

communications icon

Contacts, Messaging and Course Rating System:
Throughout their learning experiences, you can exhange messages with your learners, from within Odijoo. Odijoo’s messaging system provides you with an inbox and the ability to send any Odijoo member a private message. You can also add members as Contacts/friends within Odijoo.  In addition, once your learners have completed your course, they can provide you some feedback using Odijoo’s Course Rating System. Odijoo’s Course rating system is user-maintained and works similar to that of Amazon and other websites.

6 Reasons to Adopt Odijoo for your Organization’s Training

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Are you a Small to Medium Sized Business struggling with Employee Training, or a small school that wants to make the switch to Distance Education? It’s time to make the switch to Odijoo and here are six reasons why:

Affordability and Ease of Use

Odijoo is an affordable Employee Training and Learning solution. Why?

With traditional Learning and Training, significant time, effort and money must be invested in order to teach students. Many instructors must be hired or trained, travel costs to and from locations must be incurred and courses must be designed and administered in an engaging way, so as to “stick” with students.

ELearning has been proven to be more effective than traditional learning, but is often too expensive and technically difficult to implement in an organization, especially a smaller one. Learning Management Systems must be installed, developed, themed and hosted and on top of that, dynamic and Interactive Online Courses don’t create themselves, Media Designers do!

Odijoo is both affordable and easy to use. It’s free to sign up and create a course in Odijoo and if you’d like to create a Campus (your own subdomain in Odijoo from which to train only your organization’s employees), the cost is anywhere from $0-$5000. This is only a small fraction of the cost of maintaining a Learning Management System.

In addition, Odijoo’s course authoring tool has all the features required to create an engaging and dynamic Online Course, without the learning curve. Or, if you prefer, you can upload your PowerPoint, or import your Flash Files, to easily convert course material into Odijoo.

Your own Branded Online Training Centre on the Web

Sign up for an Odijoo Campus for free and have your own domain @ yourcampusname.odijoo.com from which to train your employees.

How? It’s as simple as emailing us with a request for a Campus and you’re ready to go with your very own subdomain. For example, ABC Corporation can register ABC.Odijoo.com and 123 Corporation can register 123.Odijoo.com.

Once you’re finished registering your campus, you can customize it, add your courses and invite your students to join to start learning – it’s that easy!

You can change the theme of your Campus, Add a Logo and add a Personal Message to your Campus, to replicate the look and feel of your company and/or website. With Odijoo’s easy to use Campuses, your organization can have their own place on the web that matches their website, at an affordable price.

Privacy and Security

Campuses are not only branded and affordable, but also private and secure.

Simply sign up for a subdomain of your choice @ yourcampusname.Odijoo.com and be sure to set your campus to private. Now you can add your courses, invite your employees to learn and administer your training material in peace, as nobody will see or know about your Campus, its students, or the course material within it, unless you’ve given them permission to!

Easy to Use Roles and Role Settings

Do you have multiple instructors and multiple groups of employees you need to train? With Odijoo’s custom role settings, this is no longer an issue.

Once you’ve set up your Corporate Training Centre at yourcampusname.odijoo.com, you can add your courses in. Each course can be assigned custom permission settings. You can control which teachers and which students are assigned to which course, and which courses are blocked from visibility.

For example, ABC Corp may start a campus at ABC.Odijoo.com with the following courses and role permission settings:

MATH 100 – Teacher: Peter, Students: Mary, Bob, Bill
MATH 200 – Teacher: Dale, Students: John, Dave, Bill
MATH 300 – Teacher: Jim, Students: Linda, Susan, Allan

All-in-One Approach



With Odijoo, you don’t just get a Course Creation Tool and you don’t just get a Learning Management System – you get both and MORE.

With Odijoo, you can sign up and create a course, share a course, sell a course, administer a course, put a course in a campus and add quizzes, discussions and social networking elements to a course, all in one sitting. On top of that, it’s all web-based and hosted for you. In fact, you’ll only pay if:

1. You need to invite students to a Campus and the Campus is private (i.e. not visible to the general public)

Or

2. You sell a Course on Odijoo (we deduct 10% from the purchase price)

For more information on Odijoo, visit www.odijoo.com

Odijoo Marketplace: “the iTunes of Knowledge”

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Odijoo is an asynchronous eLearning platform, which takes a student-centered online learning approach. The goal of Odijoo is to facilitate 2-way learning in the classroom setting: student to student, student to teacher and teacher to student. This means combining the functionality of an eLearning platform, with social networking features.

One of these features is the Odijoo Marketplace. What is the Odijoo Marketplace? Picture iTunes, or Amazon, but instead of music and media being exchanged, it is knowledge, in the form of online courses.

Users can connect with one another and share knowledge in the Odijoo marketplace; users can search for courses by name, subject matter or industry and enroll either for free or for a fee (if the classroom administrator has set one) and instantly begin learning!

If you’re a subject matter expert or trainer, you can also create a course in Odijoo and add it to the Marketplace as either a free or paid enrollment course. If you choose to charge, for every user that enrolls in your course or buys your syndicated course content, Odijoo™ deducts 10% from the purchase price (with a $5 minimum charge) and you keep the rest. If you don’t make money, we don’t charge!

Odijoo’s Marketplace also has a Course Rating System built inside it – after enrolling in a course and taking it, users can rate it. This involves users giving the course a rating out of 5 stars and leaving a comment about their experiences with it. The system works much like that of Amazon or Expedia and is designed to give potential students a better idea of the quality of a course, before enrolling.

Sign up for Odijoo at www.odijoo.com and check out the Odijoo Marketplace for yourself!

Syndicating your Knowledge Online in 4 Easy Steps

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

If you’re a subject matter expert, syndicating your knowledge means sharing your expertise with students, without needing to be a teacher. For example, if you know a lot about Sales, you can create a Sales Training Course and rather than teaching it to your students, you can sell the course for whatever price you want. Once buyers buy the course, they can either use it to learn themselves, or publish it into a classroom and re-teach it to their own students.

You can get started in four easy steps:

  1. First, turn your knowledge into an eLearning course, with Odijoo’s built-in course authoring tool. Alternatively, if you have PowerPoint slides ready, you can use Odijoo’s Import PowerPoint function.
  2. Make your courses more effective, by adding colors, images, embedded videos, narration and more, using Odijoo authoring tool.
  3. Set a syndication fee of your choosing for the course – this is the price each user pays when they buy your course.
  4. Share your course with Odijoo users in the Odjioo Marketplace.

Now all you need to do is sit back and watch as your knowledge gets monetized. Every time someone purchases your syndicated course, you get paid – it’s that simple!

To learn more about Syndicating online courses in Odijoo, see Help.

Seven Tips for Creating a Positive Online Learning Experience…in Odijoo

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Here’s a great article by Faculty Focus on the “Seven Tips for Creating a Positive Online Learning Experience“.

Try applying these principles in your own Odijoo classroom :

“Personal introductions…”
Use Odijoo’s internal messaging system to send out introductions and alerts to your students. Try also engaging your students in a few introductory activities to get to know them better and create discussion.

“Constant presence in the classroom…”
Keep your students engaged by constantly creating discussions in your classroom. In Odijoo, anyone can start a discussion within a classroom, so you can encourage your students to do the same.

“Timely response to all student postings and assignments…”
Set criteria for your Odijoo quizzes and Odijoo discussions in the completion reports settings. Include detailed automatic feedback but also provide individual feedback to students for a personal touch and a more effective learning experience.

“Be clear in all “housekeeping” aspects…”
Make your course policies known, by setting specific grading criteria for your classrooms and annoncing it to students in quiz wording, classroom discussions and messages. Odijoo makes it easy to not only set a standard for your classroom, but also to make that standard known to your students.

“Give assignment feedback that is positive and that helps the student improve…”
Be detailed in your Odijoo quiz feedback and completion reports. If a student something right, provide some positive reinforcement. If they get it wrong, let them know how to improve for next time.

“Share tips, ideas, information, and personal perspectives to make the students feel more comfortable…”
Odijoo’s social learning features make it easy for students and teachers to discuss, collaborate, share and learn together – take advantage of this!

Constant presence in the classroom. When students see that the instructor is very active and visible in the class—in discussion, in class postings, etc.—it reassures them that instructor is real, is interested in the class, and is there for individual students. This will have a big impact on student success because they know the instructor is around for questions and concerns AND it gives them a more positive feeling about being in the class.
Timely response to all student postings and assignments. First, responding in a timely manner will keep students from having hold assignments until they get clarification from the instructor. It is also crucial that the instructor give thorough and immediate feedback on all assignments so students can learn how to improve and can go on to the next assignment in a timely manner.
Be clear in all “housekeeping” aspects. Grading criteria, all contact information, policy on late submissions, “netiquette,” and other such items need be clearly defined so there is a minimum of confusion later on in the class. As I have taught more classes over the years, I have compiled an extended list of these based on student queries; posting these early in the class cuts down on student confusion and student emails asking about these items—a big time-saver for both student the instructor.
Give assignment feedback that is positive and that helps the student improve. Students must have feedback on assignments that lets them know how they are doing in the class (i.e., their grade), what they need do to improve, and what they are doing right. I give individual item feedback that is made up of three parts: what is wrong, why it is wrong, and how it can be made right; I also will give positive feedback for individual points that are outstanding; and I always include an overall positive comment at the end of the assignment.
Share tips, ideas, information, and personal perspectives to make the students feel more comfortable. All of these have one goal: to give additional understanding of the subject being discussed, written about, etc. Personal perspectives are especially helpful, including those of the students: it puts the subject matter in a “real life” context, it gets more students actively and enthusiastically involved in class, and creates a stronger rapport between the students and the online instructor.

Read the full article here

Odijoo: eLearning Simplified Commercial

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Check out this humorous Online Commercial we’ve recently created, titled Odijoo: eLearning Simplified.

Let us know what you think!

New Odijoo Quiz Interface Introduced

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Check out our newly designed Odijoo Quiz Creation Interface. The new interface is sleeker, more functional and more intuitive than the old one and allows you to:
Easy Drag and Drop Navigation – Create your questions and drag them into your quiz
Question Bank – Once you create a question, it is saved, giving you the ability to reuse in future quizzes
Multiple Question Formats – Your question can be true/false, multiple choice or Single Answer format
Completion Reports – Set passing and grading criteria and track and monitor student performance in your quiz
Creating a quiz in Odijoo is easy. Simply:
1. Navigate to the Classrooms menu and select your classroom
2. Under the Activities category, select Add quiz
3. Now simply create your questions and drag them into your quiz or use your already created questions from your question bank
Try it out yourself at www.odijoo.com

Check out our newly designed Odijoo Quiz Creation Interface. The new interface is sleeker, more functional and more intuitive than the old one and features:

  • Easy Drag and Drop Navigation – Create your questions and drag them into your quiz
  • Question Bank – Once you create a question, it is saved, giving you the ability to reuse in future quizzes
  • Multiple Question Formats – Your question can be true/false, multiple choice or Single Answer format
  • Grading and Completion Reports – Set passing and grading criteria and track and monitor student performance in your quiz

Creating a quiz in Odijoo is easy. Simply:

  1. Navigate to the Classrooms menu and select your classroom
  2. Under the Activities category, select Add quiz
  3. Now simply create your questions and drag them into your quiz or use your already created questions from your question bank

Here are some screenshots!

quiz1

quiz3

quiz4

quiz5

quiz6

Try it out yourself at www.odijoo.com